Examination of Witnesses (Questions 5680
- 5699)
5680. We would thank you as a Committee for
your patience and understanding in listening to our concerns and
we hope that our comments have been helpful.
5681. Mr Liddell-Grainger: Thank you.
We do not want repetition if we can possibly avoid it. Please
be as concise as you can, as we would like to get some remarks
from the Petitioners in before the end of the session if we possibly
can. Mr Christopher Brown?
The Petition of Mr Christopher Brown.
The Petitioner appeared in person.
5682. Mr Brown: I am not familiar with
the procedures so if I commit a procedural faux pas I apologise
in advance. I have a statement based upon and to some extent expanding
upon in my petition in the light of some of the comments from
the Promoters.
5683. I am Christopher Roy Sanders Brown. I
am a retired oil company manager. I live at 43 Friars Avenue with
my wife, Heather, who still works. I am retired. We have been
there for about 23 years. My children grew up there. They come
and go nowadays but we still think of it as our family home. It
is going to be seriously injuriously affected by Crossrail. Probably
the most significant ongoing or long term impact is the construction
of the new sidings at the end of my garden which I anticipate
will cause quite a lot of noise.
5684. In general, one of the injuries is planning
blight. That was not addressed at all as far as I could see in
the response I got from Crossrail. I would be hoping to get some
compensation for that. The construction work at the end of my
garden will only take, according to Crossrail, two months and
will take place during the day. One can put up with that but when
the sidings operate they are going to cause a lot of disturbance
to the amenity and value of my house and garden.
5685. Crossrail say in their response to me
that one cannot expect compensation for an intensification of
use. I might buy the argument that more trains, particularly if
there are quiet and newer, will be an intensification of use.
I do not buy the argument that the new sidings are simply an intensification
because, although there has been track there for some time, it
has been silent for most of the time we are in the house but if
we have new sidings that is a change and not an intensification
of use. I would like compensation for that.
5686. Something came up at a local meeting recently
organised by our local authority which I hope is not the case.
It appeared not possible to be given assurances that Crossrail
would not want to cut down trees that are in my garden and those
of my neighbours, these trees having been planted some 70 years
ago in 1938, to screen the railway. They are mature and have developed
over the years. I had a call from a representative of Crossrail
this morning and I had a brief conversation. She attempted to
assure me that nobody would come into gardens and start cutting
down trees. I sincerely hope that is the case but I would like
to record that it should not be the case.
5687. I share with all the other residents of
Shenfield concern about the deterioration of the character of
the town. Our local authority will be addressing you tomorrow
and will deal with the general points.
5688. I might put up with the damage from Crossrail
if it was going to serve a useful public purpose. In my opinion,
it is not. Crossrail's own public documents say that the majority
of the traffic is going to be in London between Stratford, Whitechapel
and Paddington. I think the extension of the line through Shenfield
will frustrate the main objective of the project, as I understand
it, which is to provide a link across London. I will try and explain
why.
5689. I regard it as essentially a glorified
tube system. The fact that they are not putting any lavatories
on the trains is a surprise to quite a few people given the projected
route and its length and supports the argument that it is a tube
system. The arguments that they use for not so doing are security
threats and bombs. I would have thought you could construct trains
with the necessary facilities that could be locked up during periods
of tension, but there we are.
5690. The Secretary of State has apparently
set his face against changing the Shenfield terminus. It has been
suggested that this Committee might have the ability to seek the
power to change it anyway. I hope they might do that because if
it is not changed I think the project will be an expensive failure,
never mind the damage it will cause to my hometown.
5691. As the Committee doubtless knows, Stratford
and Liverpool Street Stations are served from Shenfield by two
rail corridors. I will refer to one as the fast and one as the
slow. I think Crossrail refer to E as the slow one. The fast corridor
carries Intercity traffic and fast commuter traffic going to both
Southend and Colchester and so on and Intercity traffic going
to Norwich. The slow corridor carries something like six or seven
all station trains an hour and I believe the Crossrail proposal
is 12. Freight has to fit in there somewhere. Our MP has raised
the question of freight in a debate on this subject and I did
see a petition which my wife found on the internet from a major
shipping company concerned about the impact on their facilities
for shipping containers.
5692. I have about 40 years' experience of using
these services in east London from Shenfield and related stations.
My wife has too. We are very familiar with frequent service interruptions.
These arise from signalling failures, track failures, train failures,
lineside fires, sadly suicides, vandalism and, who knows, maybe
the wrong sort of snow or leaves on the line.
5693. At the end of last year, I kept a record
of every instance affecting my wife in a week. On 24/25 November
last, services to London were seriously disrupted for 24 hours
by an overhead power failure at Chadwell Heath. On 1 December
serious disruption was caused by a lineside fire. On 2 December
serious delays were caused to both the Southend and Chelmsford
lines by an incident, which I fear was a fatality at Chelmsford.
All of this was within little more than a week.
5694. Crossrail propose to run nearly twice
as many trains from Shenfield and they are going to allow trains
still to run from Gidea Park, I believe, to service Maryland.
The service disruptions are likely to get worse rather than better.
5695. The practice of the previous and current
operator has been, when something goes wrong with one of these
corridors, to switch them about so that some sort of service operates
on both. I do not know what Crossrail is going to do when they
come into operation. I did ask the lady I spoke to this morning.
She said I needed to talk to one of the engineers, but they are
going to have a choice of doing two things. They can either operate
as the current operator does and, in the event of any of these
multifarious misfortunes, switch Crossrail on to the fast corridor
or vice versa, which means that trains running across London will
suffer disruption because of interference, because they are mixing
essentially a tube system with all these other forms of traffic.
Other tube systems have their own dedicated lines into London.
Either there will be disruption because of switching between the
two corridors or Crossrail will keep the slow corridor entirely
for itself.
5696. That is fine unless and until one of these
multifarious misfortunes takes place and if they cannot run some
sort of service on the fast track the bit that is not coming from
Abbey Wood will stop. Crossrail in their response to me talked
about the robust train management plan to deal with possible interruptions.
We might assume the existing operators try to maintain a robust
train management plan and a lot of these interruptions that I
have referred to are not train management; they are engineering
problems or acts of God.
5697. My contention is that it should stop at
Stratford which is a natural terminus for it. It is being built
as a natural transport hub. I have heard arguments about the new
Stratford City being built. I do not take those very seriously.
If you look around Stratford Station, there is an awful lot of
urban wasteland that, with the will, could be used for Stratford
Crossrail.
5698. I sent in some drawings. There is one
dated October 2003. This drawing, together with the one which
follows, I obtained from the Promoters at one of their roadshows
in the high street, showing their wares. The date on the drawing
is correct. That shows my house to the left, along Friars Avenue.
If you go through the station you will see the line bifurcating
into a couple of train sidings which are located between the existing
running lines going respectively to Southend and to Colchester
and Chelmsford.
5699. If that were built like that, I do not
think that would bother anybody very much. It certainly did not
bother me very much. I went to another roadshow a year or so later
and was therefore very disappointed to discover this drawing,
dated February 2005, that shows the big extension to the eastern
side and the construction of western sidings, the new platform,
the taking over of car parks and so on. I find it remarkable that
in the space of 16 months the impact of what must have been a
significant part of their plan, being where they intend to end
it, has changed so much in such a short space of time.
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